My Grandmother's Hands

Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies

De: Resmaa Menakem MSW LICSW SEP

Narrado por: Cary Hite

A National Best Seller

"My Grandmother's Hands will change the direction of the movement for racial justice." (Robin DiAngelo, New York Times best-selling author of White Fragility)

In this groundbreaking book, therapist Resmaa Menakem examines the damage caused by racism in America from the perspective of trauma and body-centered psychology.

The body is where our instincts reside and where we fight, flee, or freeze, and it endures the trauma inflicted by the ills that plague society. Menakem argues this destruction will continue until Americans learn to heal the generational anguish of white supremacy, which is deeply embedded in all our bodies. Our collective agony doesn't just affect African Americans. White Americans suffer their own secondary trauma as well. So do blue Americans - our police.

My Grandmother's Hands is a call to action for all of us to recognize that racism is not only about the head but about the body, and introduces an alternative view of what we can do to grow beyond our entrenched racialized divide.

Paves the way for a new body-centered understanding of white supremacy - how it is literally in our blood and our nervous system.

Offers a step-by-step healing process based on the latest neuroscience and somatic healing methods, in addition to incisive social commentary.

©2018 Central Recovery Press (P)2018 Central Recovery Press

Think You Don't Need This? Think Again, Please!

A group of us (mostly white people) from our Quaker Meeting (Church) decided to pursue our troubled feelings about race through a Zoom Book Club, and "My Grandmother's Hands" was our first selection.

I had doubts - I'm not a real new-age, "touchy-feely", self-help kind of person. After reading the first few chapters and having our first gathering, however, I am truly a believer. There are lots of uncomfortable things in this book, and there are sections and even chapters that you may question scientifically and practically. There can be, however, no denying that experiencing this book and its self-reflections and exercises with an open mind is a very powerful emotional journey.

Doing it as a group has been particularly meaningful - sharing questions, different personal experiences and responses has been enlightening and very beneficial to, I believe, all of us involved.

Whether you read it alone or can share the experience as a family or a discussion group, prepare yourself for some reactions you may not have expected. Whatever your race or age or ethnicity, there will be difficult moments and personal discoveries.

This is not based entirely on the point of view of any one race, although the author is an African American Psychologist. He explains, of course, the everyday experience of being Black in America, and that is painful for all races to contemplate, but the book is nonjudgmental. He offers perspectives and exercises for three basic groups: Blacks, Whites, and what he terms Blues (police) with balance and compassion.

Each of us is a product of our history (and its collective and personal trauma), culture, experience, physical environment; often we think and act in ways so elemental as to be automatic and unconscious. This book helps us be aware of those biases and suggests ways to slow down and think of new ways of responding to what are often unthinking physical and mental reactions.

Read (or listen to) this book - or even better, do both at the same time. Genuinely put your body and mind into the experience. Do the exercises. I (and the group of which I am a part) have benefited greatly. I think you will too! I wish everyone could and would read and discuss "My Grandmother's Hands"!

Life changing...

I have been given hope and tools to change the deeply held trauma in America. This work must be read by all who care about the future of our country and our world.

Good read for all Americans

The author did a great job of presenting some valid truths regarding his theory of white body supremacy. I appreciated the summary a t the end of each chapter that reiterated his main points.

THANK YOU!

Required reading for every single American. Well written and researched with tools to a pathway for peace for all Americans.

A great read that was very informative.

This book scientifically, spiritually, and historically delineates the myriad traumatic experiences that all cultures and “races” have experienced as far back as the historical records allow. The fact that race was not established until the late 1600s as a venture to coalesce all “white” people together under a new umbrella versus continuing the divide of various ethnicities that persecuted one another. To establish a multitude of powerful, systematic divides to gain profit and power over others.

None of the explanations in this book serve as a justification or excuse for the heinous events that permanently scarred many people. In a simplified, but venerating fashion this book acutely explains how hurt people, hurt people. Not to offer an alternate historical event of what could have been, if one group of people who were no longer oppressed elected to address their psychological warfare and heal all wounds, rather than deflect and redirect all sorts of traffic-sized pain onto the next minority. It takes longer to cry, forgive, understand and heal with therapy than it does to reroute pain and malice as an outlet for an immediate, yet temporary, release on others that cause generational domino effects.

My grandmothers hands

Narration was excellent and the content superb. I’m have learned so much and look forward to sharing with many.

Profoundly insightful

An essential read for all folks on a journey of Self discovery and healing intergenerational patterns of trauma.

An excellent step forward

I can't think of many people this book wouldn't be deeply helpful to. If you want a body-mindful therapy book that dives into the US's greatest trauma, white supremacy, this is surely it. The traumatic stress reduction exercises and practices are enough for me to highly recommend it. The narration is excellent too.

Every American human will make their world better by reading this important book, and getting in touch with their “soul nerve”

After hearing an interview with Resmaa Menakem on Krista Tippett’s On Being podcast, I felt compelled to read this book. It is clear from any reasonable standpoint that discussions of race — including racial tension or bias, history or race relations, equity and equality, or anything else in this country conditioned by skin color and culture — are all, without exception, experienced as strongly emotional and deeply impactful for everyone involved. It should be obvious to even casual observers that progress in such discussions is frequently, if not uniformly, beset by barriers that come from subconscious and visceral reactions to the issues at hand and the people involved. This reality is so pervasive that we almost miss it, like fish swimming in poisoned water that has simply come to be the norm.

Stepping outside oneself just long enough to perceive this situation — which the interview helped to foster for me — is the first step toward becoming aware of this uncomfortable situation, becoming more present in one’s own body with its limitations and potentialities, and working through the “clean pain” of resolving trauma before blowing it through others mindlessly or maliciously.

If you can see, even briefly or fleetingly, how this can improve your own life, the lives of those close to you, and the community and world you live in, no matter where you stand or sit in this scenario, then you will find this book as powerful and life-altering as I believe it will be for me.

Inspiring Read!

Inspiring book that creates a framework to understand the social dynamics of our time. Where they came from and a roadmap for recovery.